Walking tall on prosthetic legs

Marine is poised at nexus of man and machine

With the help of a walker and the guidance of a physical therapist, Sgt. Collin Raaz takes his new prosthetic legs for a walk around San Diego Naval Medical Center.
— Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune

With the help of a walker and the guidance of a physical therapist, Sgt. Collin Raaz takes his new prosthetic legs for a walk around San Diego Naval Medical Center.
— Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune

Marine Sgt. Collin Raaz takes his first steps in his new prosthetic legs at Naval Medical Center San Diego last October. Raaz, who lost his legs while serving in Afghanistan, is the type of patient Invictus San Diego would serve. ...
— Nelvin C. Cepeda

In a sunlit room of the naval hospital, Sgt. Collin Raaz balances on two tall prosthetic legs, standing at the threshold of his bionic future.

With two carbon fiber feet laced into tennis shoes, mechanical shins and microprocessor knees attached to his thighs, Raaz is one inch shy of his old height of 6 feet 2 inches tall.

Four and a half months after he stepped on an insurgent bomb in Afghanistan, the 25-year-old Marine does not know how far this fusion of man, machine and computer will go.

In part, that will depend on him.

“You control your recovery,” he says. His own stubborn, sweat-soaked determination propelled him this far — faster than most as badly wounded as he was — through months of agonizing medical treatments and exercises to rebuild his body.

The Long Walk Home: A Wounded Marine's Recovery

A growing number of troops who lost their legs fighting in Afghanistan are learning to walk again at San Diego Naval Medical Center. Staff writer Gretel C. Kovach and photographer Nelvin C. Cepeda shadowed Sgt. Collin Raaz through three months of his treatment and recovery.

Science, including the latest advances in prosthetic technology, will also play a part.

Raaz grips the parallel bars and admires his prosthetic feet. Size 10s, instead of the 12½s he had before. Then he looks up, into the mirror at the end of the ramp, and steps forward.

Bionic future

When Rear Adm. C. Forrest Faison III, commander of San Diego Naval Medical Center, started his career 31 years ago, military medicine had no need for prosthetic care or comprehensive rehabilitation. “You either got well really quickly, or we transitioned you to the VA,” he said.

“Now we’ve made a commitment to take care of these guys,” Faison said. “We are making sure we get them the best available technology, partnering with academia and universities to prepare the next generation of prosthetics to help them going into the future.”

Raaz is the first bilateral amputee at the Balboa Park hospital to begin walking on full-height legs with the X-2 model. Previous patients transitioned to them after starting on C-Legs, a prosthetic with a microprocessor knee introduced in the United States in 1999.

During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon sought prosthetics that would be durable and functional enough for an infantryman to use in combat. Otto Bock, the German company that developed the C-Leg, was awarded a grant to build such a leg for the U.S. Military Amputee Research Program. The result was the X-2, which the military began testing in late 2009.

The new leg moves more naturally. It has a gyroscope and modes for jogging and other activities.

Each battery-powered knee costs the Defense Department more than $30,000, not including the foot and other components, assembly and fitting. A version of the X-2 now in limited release on the commercial market called the Genium can cost more than $95,000.